I love this sort of gadget.. you plug it in and connect it to your Amazon Account and Wi-Fi... and it listens and takes commands... it is really quite effective.

You address the device by saying "Alexa" and it listens and does it's stuff... :)

"Alexa, how are my trains running?"

"Alexa, play some Christmas Music"

"Alexa, will it rain tomorrow"

"Alexa, tell me a joke"

The Amazon Echo Dot is around £50 and if like me you have an Amazon Prime Account they have a great feature out of the box... playing pretty much any music you can name, instantly... it even connects in to wireless speakers ...

The Echo almost always seems to understand voice commands to... when it got it wrong on one occasion I said "Alexa, you suck" and it responded by telling me that I can send feedback to Amazon :)